


but I want a better place

by Miasunrise



Category: South Park
Genre: Lovecraftian Monster(s), M/M, R'lyeh, Supernatural Elements, k2 week 2019, sp k2 week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-20 04:01:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20221456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miasunrise/pseuds/Miasunrise
Summary: Two strong hands clamp down on his upper arms. So tight they hurt, though he’s frozen in fear and doesn’t notice. There’s violet mist everywhere for a few significant seconds, and when he blinks Kyle is standing meters away from the monster. Everything is warm and he’s tucked neatly against a lean chest.“Alright?” A rough voice is asking him.Kyle looks up at dark violet eyes. His cape is wound around Kyle’s shoulder. One gloved hand is still on his upper arm.“Yeah,” the redhead manages.





	but I want a better place

**Author's Note:**

> Written for k2 week 2019 :) I included all the prompts.
> 
> I really wanted a k2 fic that explored Mysterion's connection with the Netherworld and I couldn't find one, so I wrote one. It doesn't get as deep into it as I wanted to, but it does have a lot of Kyle-helping-Mysterion which is another thing I needed like breathing so here we are.
> 
> I took a lot of liberties with the Lovecraftian monsters and the lore.
> 
> **Warning** for blood, but it isn't overly gory; drug references too but again not any detail.
> 
> I used Sarkastic's design for Mysterion: [here](https://sarkastic.tumblr.com/post/168804283682/more-stuff-about-the-secret-superhero-au-heres). 
> 
> Enjoy :)

* * *

Kyle isn’t doing anything spectacular the first time it happens. He’s walking through the mall with Stan, three days after his nineteenth birthday, looking for a new pair of sneakers for Ike like his mom had asked him to. Stan is bitching about some animal hate group he’d been reading up on and how it relates to the dying mall and Kyle’s just listening passively when a giant BANG! explodes throughout the food court.

The wall next to the Harbucks shatters into concrete, plaster, and scaffolding. 

A monster with centipede like legs and a massive flat head scurries into the mall. The end of its long body-tail whacks against the front counter of a Shakey’s, turning it into rubble. 

It’s the size of a school bus. Kyle freezes in his tracks, looking at the monster from a good ten feet back.

“What the fuck,” Stan says beside him.

Kyle agrees.

True to their nature, while the other South Park residents in the mall run away, _ they _head towards the monster. It roars across the food court, sounding like a lawnmower but wetter, throatier. Deadly.

“Jesus christ,” Kyle says, skidding to a stop a few yards back from the thing. It’s diving its bug-head down, trying to pick up the people scattering away from it; it hasn’t gotten anyone yet but it’s only a matter of time.

Stan grabs his shoulder. “What’re we doing?” he asks, looking for direction. They’ve dealt with heaps and heaps of bullshit before — this is just another one added to the pile.

“We—” 

A flash of violet comes crashing through the hole in the wall the monster had made. A swirling trail of mist follows it. 

It’s a person. Muted violet bodysuit, dark cape, lofty hood and a dumb electric green M stamped to the front of his suit. There are green accents to match near his knees and belt and outlining his black boots. It looks a little ridiculous, like something out of a comic book.

But the mist seems otherworldly.

Kyle’s seen a lot (_a lot_) of weird shit in this town, but his eyes stay glued to the guy, fixed on the swirling fog around him.

“Who the hell…” Stan says beside him.

“Dunno.”

The guy in the purple bodysuit and cape leaps into the air and lands on top of the monster. He grabs it by one long horn, holds it as still as he’s able and punches it in the head. A violet swirl of mist follows with the hit. 

The beast screeches, high and pained. The guy in the bodysuit punches it again, this time straight down into one of its six white eyes. 

It reels back, and the guy is flung off of its body. He smacks hard against the wall. Slides down it and doesn’t move, in a heap on the tiled mall floor.

The monster scuttles its thousands of tiny legs towards him, its roar like nails on a chalkboard. It opens its flat, teeth-lined jaw and towers over his still body.

“Shit,” Kyle says, watching it happen in slow motion. “He needs help.”

“Kyle, _ wait!_” Stan shouts.

He’s already moving. Kyle runs over and slides to a stop only a few feet away from the monster and the guy in purple. He grabs the first thing he sees — a dirty tray on top of a trash bin — and lobs it hard into one of the monster’s eyes. 

_ That _gets its attention. It turns its flat head at him, pincers wagging back and forth as it screeches, all animalistic fury. Kyle feels his blood go cold. He really has dealt with a lot of weird shit and has come close to dying before, but this seems final. He’d put himself in the line of fire for an absolute stranger and couldn’t explain why.

The giant centipede’s mouth is inches from him and Kyle starts to run, starts to try to get away while blood begins to pool behind his eyes in fear. He hears Stan screaming his name.

Two strong hands clamp down on his upper arms. So tight they hurt, though he’s frozen in fear and doesn’t notice. There’s violet mist everywhere for a few significant seconds, and when he blinks Kyle is standing meters away from the monster. Everything is warm and he’s tucked neatly against a lean chest. 

“Alright?” A rough voice is asking him.

Kyle looks up at dark violet eyes. His cape is wound around Kyle’s shoulder. One gloved hand is still on his upper arm.

“Yeah,” the redhead manages. 

The hero nods at him and lets him go. He rushes back towards the monster without another word. His bottom lip is split open, blood dripping down on the hard floor of the foodcourt. Generic mall music plays on the intercom as he beats the giant centipede into an ugly mess. It doesn’t take long, and the monster only manages two more hits of its own.

Once the beast is dead, the few mall patrons who had stayed within sight cheer. The hero doesn’t look at the crowd. He wipes blood from his face with the back of his hand, and then narrows his eyes at Stan and Kyle in obvious disapproval.

“What!” Kyle snaps, frowning back at him.

Stan grabs his arm. “Dude.”

“No, if he's got a _ problem-_” Kyle starts, feeling fighty. Not a rare occurrence for him.

The guy in purple shakes his head at them, and then he’s gone in a bloom of violet mist.

* * *

“You’re full of shit,” Kenny McCormick says to Kyle that Friday night, after Kyle explains what happened in the mall. 

They’re in Kyle’s bedroom, listening to music Kenny had been wanting to show him for weeks now. It’s always hard to get Kyle alone. He’s usually with Stan which makes perfect sense, has always been true, is fine because they’re best friends first and Kenny gets that.

“I’m serious,” Kyle says, his green eyes lighting up, “It was the size of a bus. And he-” Here Kyle pauses, trying to find the right words, always so damn articulate it makes Kenny feel stupid sometimes, from being impressed and from self-consciousness. “He’s got powers, or something. He used mist to kill the demon.”

“How do you know it was a demon?” Kenny asks before he can think better of it.

“I did some research.” Kyle hauls his laptop over and sets it in his lap. The music keeps playing out of it. They’re all songs that make Kenny think of him, though he sure as fuck hasn’t told Kyle that part. “I think it was from the Netherworld. At least it sounds like this thing,” he says, pointing to his computer screen. There’s a short article up, captioned_ The Dæmons of Lovecraft_, and a rough sketch of the centipede-monster. “It’s called a bokrog.” 

“Huh.”

“It’s supposed to be a water-lizard demon… I don’t know what it was doing in the mall.” 

“Huh.” 

The next song starts, and Kenny watches the lights of the room shine in green eyes. 

“You really don’t believe me?” Kyle asks, turning to look at him. 

Kenny has to look away. “Naw, I believe you about the monster. This town is fucked,” he says, shifting to lie on his back on Kyle’s bed. He puts his hands behind his head and stares up at the ceiling. The music floats into his ears. They’re all love songs, every single one from start to finish, and he knows Kyle won’t pick up on it because he never has. He doesn’t resent him for it. Kenny’s got a one-sided crush and it’s always been like that. It _ should _be like that. “I just don’t know about this superhero thing.” 

Kenny's liked Kyle… always. He can’t think of when it started. Maybe fourth grade, but maybe before that. He’s fiery and stubborn and so quick to anger at injustices it’s hard not to find him totally charming. He doesn’t let anyone get away with _ anything_. He’s smart, could problem solve his way out of an international conspiracy and _ has _, more than once, with Kenny watching from the sidelines.

Kyle’s on a whole other level. He deserves someone amazing, someone who shines just as bright as he does, who can match him step for step. Someone who _ won't _drag him down with all their emotional baggage and death-curses and poverty. Someone who's life is going somewhere. 

He'd just wear Kyle out, chip away at him until all that tenacity was eaten up by all of Kenny's nothingness. 

“I looked him up online. There’s been sightings as far as a month back,” Kyle says. Kenny hums out a soft ‘uh huh.’ The redhead raises his eyebrows at him. “You think I beat it all by myself?” Kyle asks.

Kenny grins up at the ceiling. “I think you’re stubborn enough, for sure.” 

“Fuck off, Ken,” Kyle shoves him in the side with a socked foot and a snort. 

Kenny only laughs. He wants to tell Kyle not to help Mysterion anymore, but he thinks saying it might be too obvious, so he keeps his mouth shut and lets his head fill with music. Turning his neck just enough to get an eyeful of wild red hair, he looks up at Kyle and he sighs.

* * *

Kyle’s at the gas station the next time it happens.

He’s just paying for his drink when he hears a loud roar from the dark streets outside. His eyes dance over to the long line of windows and he sees a flash of violet stream across the large panes.

Kyle drops the cold can just before the cashier takes it to ring it in, the dark liquid sloshing across the counter. The cashier snaps at him, says something rude but Kyle doesn't hear it.

Turning on his toes, the redhead blasts his way through the double-door exit of the gas station and breaks into the cool pre-winter night air of the street.

The demon is a ten foot long scorpion, with eyes all up and down its dragon-like spine. Mysterion is already fighting it, traffic stopped and onlookers staring. It's an ugly blueish-purple, the same colour as a bruise. Kyle’s read up on some monsters, scouring the internet and texting Henrietta for information, but he hasn’t seen one like this.

Two massive lobster-claws pinch at the hero. The sound of them snapping on nothing cracks through the sky. Mysterion is entirely focused — fists at his sides and head up, alert and alight with intention. He jumps into the air and punches the beast in one pincer, sending it tripping back despite its considerable size. The hero moves in with twisting mist trailing out behind him, pummeling the beast, hit after hit, fog slowly encasing them both.

Watching from the front of the store, Kyle’s mouth hangs open.

It stays like that until he sees the scorpion's tail swivel around, sneaking to get the hero in the back. 

Adrenalin ignites inside him. Kyle digs his heels into the hard pavement and bursts into a run; he runs as fast as he can, yelling the hero’s name. Violet eyes hone in on him and he’s pissed but it doesn’t matter, not to Kyle, not for a second because that scorpion tail is lethal and Mysterion doesn’t see it.

Diving head-first Kyle latches himself onto the tail, yanking _ hard_. He pulls it down to the earth with his whole body as he falls, and gravity does the rest. The demon must be weak from the fight, otherwise Kyle is sure he wouldn't be able to hold it like he is now. The mist is still clouded around them too, cool and creeping.

“Get out of here!” Mysterion yells, standing near the head of the monster.

“Now’s your chance!” Kyle shouts back, his throat almost raw. 

The hero looks at him again with that same stare of obvious disapproval. 

"Kill it!” Kyle screams, curling himself around the tail to keep the thing still. "_Kill _it for fuck's sake!!" He shouts again when the hero doesn't move.

Brow set heavy, Mysterion charges in finally. With a swirl of trailing mist he disappears into nowhere, only to reappear right under the beast’s huge exoskeleton head. 

He punches up into its jaw, killing it in a single last blow.

Once the monster drops lifeless to the street, the people around start to cheer. Someone calls his name. Others go about their evening with a sigh of relief.

Kyle lets go of the tail, his hands and arms burning from friction.

Mysterion is wiping dirt from his face.

After a minute of staring, Kyle’s mouth starts to work. “Hey. I’m-”

“_No_.” Mysterion drops his hand back to his side. He stays where he is, on the opposite end of the dead demon, all anger and furrowed brows. “_Don’t _ try to help again. _Don’t _come anywhere near this shit. Do you understand?”

Kyle’s red eyebrows drop down into a glare of his own, and he takes a step towards Mysterion. “Look-”

But for the second time, the hero’s gone in a flash of purple mist. Kyle’s left standing there with a demonic corpse and the sound of county police sirens wailing in the distance.

* * *

Kyle doesn’t dream very often, and they’re usually pretty boring when he does. 

This one… is not. 

This one is pretty fucked up. 

He’s been thinking a lot about the hero and the demons from the Netherworld he’d read about. Kenny had just come over a few nights before. Kyle blames it on that, and maybe stress from school. 

Kenny hasn’t done the whole princess thing since they were kids, but when Kyle’s dream starts it starts with her. He’s in his elf clothes, made more real in his imagination — a crown of twigs, long robes, pointed ears. He’s lying in her lap under a wide oak tree. She’s playing with his hair, running familiar fingers through it. Kenny’s played with Kyle’s hair before. Just once. He’d never forgotten about it.

_ I love your eyes_, Princess Kenny is saying, over and over until Kyle’s brain propels the dream forward too fast; _Green like the forest. Green like a far away planet. Green like the darkest parts of the sea. _

Kyle looks up at her. She’s still just Kenny, all the same lines of his jaw and freckled cheeks and sun-kissed skin. Even the gap between her teeth is the same. 

“You’re such a flirt, Ken.”

_ You think? _

“Yeah, you flirt with everyone.” 

_ You think? _

There’s a crack through the humid forest air, and Mysterion appears. Kyle hasn’t seen him since that night outside the gas station about a week ago. He stands tall and looks over at them. 

‘Your girlfriend?’ is all Mysterion says.

Kyle’s face goes bright red and he sits straight up, right out of Kenny’s lap. “I-” 

The dream shifts and a giant spider crashes down from nowhere, its two front legs raised back and ready to stab into Princess Kenny’s stomach. Kyle’s head fills with fear and he rushes in to save her — she’s standing too, ready to fight. Mysterion comes in straight after him, saving them both in a swaft of unfurling violet mist. The fog is so warm, all-encompassing, that Kyle starts to worry he’ll suffocate in it.

There’s a mess of light and pictures as his brain struggles to stay asleep; there are too many inconsistencies happening and he’s starting to realize he’s dreaming.

It ends, eventually. The last thing Kyle remembers is sitting between the two of them, the giant spider long gone, and getting a warm kiss on each cheek in the dark of a haunting forest.

He wakes up feeling hot and extremely concerned. 

“What the _ fuck_,” he says to the emptiness of his bedroom. 

* * *

It’s a bright sunny day when Kenny gets Kyle alone again. They’re heading home together from Stan’s soccer game, side by side on the warm summer streets of South Park. Stan had stayed afterwards to go over drills and whatever other sporty things he does after games. They’d won against North Park and Stan had been ecstatic. He’d grinned at both of them and pulled them in for a huge hug. Really, if you asked Kenny, _ Stan _was the sappiest of the three of them, hands down. 

“There’s a portal, somewhere. That’s how the demons are getting in,” Kyle says, walking beside him.

Kenny doesn’t reply. Another demon hasn’t come through since the scorpion, eight days ago now. He’s starting to wonder if it might stay that way. He hopes so. As much as he likes adventure (you don’t pack up and move to Romania to start a singing career at eight years old if you’re afraid of the unknown), he doesn’t want his town overrun by monsters. He has no idea how to close the portal, how to even find it, and the one person he wants to ask is the one person he wants the least involved in any of this. 

But Kyle’s determined to not let Kenny have that, clearly.

“I think he’s _ from _R'lyeh,” Kyle says because he's a fucking genius and Kenny hates him, he absolutely does, “Or at least his soul is. I was reading one of Lovecraft’s books — that's where all the monsters are from.” 

“Yeah?” 

Kyle nods, hauling the book out of his backpack while they walk. “And this, right here,” the redhead says, pointing. Kenny leans over to peer down at the page. Kyle had bought this book a few weeks ago, but Kenny’s had a copy of the Necronomicon since he was a kid. After he’d learned about his parents and the cult, he’d read every Lovecraft book he could get his hands on. The writing had been a bit hard for him. He’d only been nine years old when he’d first read them. “I think it's important for closing the portal,” Kyle says.

The two-lined poem is there. The one he’d repeated in his head since he was a kid. The one that was supposed to have taught him something about himself, but hadn’t.

“I see,” Kenny says. “Have you met him again?” He asks to keep up appearances. 

Kyle shakes his head. “No.” He’s weirdly quiet after that. Peering over, Kenny can see he looks embarrassed. It’s not a common expression for him.

Kenny leans his taller frame over and grins lopsidedly. “What are you thinking about?” It must be Stan. If Kyle’s got eyes for anyone it’s Stan Marsh. He’s pretty hot in his soccer jersey so Kenny gets it. 

“Nothing,” Kyle says, looking away from him. He shoves the book back into his bag, frowning. “Stop it.” 

“Stop what?”

“Looking at me like that.” 

“Like what?” Kenny watches the lines in the redhead’s face contort with frustration, irritation — he’s so, so fun to tease. Kyle gets riled with every inch of his body. He reacts with all of himself, throws himself completely into it just like he does everything. 

“Like you—” 

The sky opens up. There hadn't been a single cloud a second ago, Kenny swears, but nothing ever makes sense here, not even the weather. The downpour is so heavy they can’t see two feet in front of them. The sound of the rain is deafening and they’re soaked in seconds.

“Holy fuck!” Kyle says over the loud sound of pounding rain. 

They’re about a block from the library, the nearest building they can duck inside free of charge. When they get there they’re drenched from head to toe, dripping water on the old hardwood floor. They’d run the whole way there and Kyle’s cheeks are red with effort and his curly hair is frizzy, drops down wildly around his ears, his nose is just as red as his cheeks and he’s breathing heavy and he’s so pretty, so fucking pretty, Kenny thinks; in this moment, all wet and warm now in the entrance to the library they’ve visited their whole lives. 

Kenny’s heart throbs, once and long and lowly. 

“Shit,” Kyle says, shucking water off of his bare arms. “Where’d that come from?” 

“Dunno,” Kenny says and he worries that Kyle can hear it in his voice, that he’s long-gone for him. 

“You look hilarious,” Kyle says, grinning up at Kenny.

The blond smirks right back. “You look _hot_.” Deflect with humour: his standard response to everything heavy. 

“Kenny.” Kyle’s expression drops flat. 

“Has Stan seen you like this? Soaked in rainwater? I don’t think he’d survive.” He leans in closer and lets his wolfish grin eat up any remaining space on his mouth. “I know I won't.” 

Two green eyes roll, but his red cheeks go darker. “Fuck off man.” 

“Here, I’ll take a picture and send it to him-” 

“You will not! _ Kenny!_” 

He snaps one with Kyle’s phone, which he pulls effortlessly from the back pocket of his friend’s jeans. He holds it out of Kyle’s reach and sends it to Stan — as well as himself, for nostalgia’s sake. Some day all he’s gonna have are pictures.

“Dude!” 

“What? I’m helping.” 

Kyle grabs his phone back and looks at the picture and message. 

“You sent this to yourself?” 

“Hey,” Kenny smirks, “Stan might not notice, but we’re not _ all _ blind. You’re a total babe, Kyle.” 

“Oh my god.”

And somehow, even though it hurts because the now-fading blush is for Stan and not him, Kenny starts to laugh. The situation is too comical and he’s self-depreciative anyway. The rain beats down outside against the warm, misty summer pavement and the cool glass of the library. 

Kyle’s expression goes soft and he looks at Kenny with a confused smile creeping along his face. 

“What the hell, dude?” 

“I don’t know,” Kenny says, a few post-laughter shivers running through him. “You’re—”

He feels it suddenly, like the split second before death when he’s shot in the head. A quick beat of cerebral pain. The fog from the Netherworld tries to escape from his hands, its way of warning him, but Kenny holds it in.

The portal has spat something out, and it’s on its way.

He looks at Kyle, fearful and worried and trying to sort out how to disappear and come back as Mysterion without raising suspicion.

But it happens too fast.

The monster is a fat wyrm, about the size of a large car. It slithers up from the library’s basement, coming towards them between the rows and rows of bookshelves. 

People start screaming and running, pushing their way to the exit. 

The lights flicker.

“Oh shit,” Kyle is saying, scanning the room. “Kenny? Hey! Where the hell are you going?!”

Kenny runs. He knows it’ll make him look like a coward, like a piece of shit, that Kyle will fucking _ hate _it, but it doesn’t matter. It won't seem that out of character because he’s done some pretty shit things in the past, and he needs to get Mysterion out here in time to do something before Kyle gets himself killed trying to fight that thing alone.

He peels his civilian clothes off behind a row of books and shoves them in a trashcan on his way out the window. The rain is warm, way too warm. It’s not earthly rain. Mysterion rounds the library and runs back in through the entrance. 

Kyle is still standing there, dumbstruck. 

“Mysterion!” He says when he spots him. “Fuck.” Kyle sounds relieved. At least Kenny isn’t a total disappointment to him like this. “It’s over there.” The redhead points to the wyrm, slinking around near the back of the library. 

“I got it,” Mysterion says, blowing past him. “Get out of here.”

“Fuck that,” he hears Kyle say from behind him. 

When Kyle catches up with him, Mysterion turns to frown at him. “Get out of here, I said!”

“No. You shouldn’t do this shit alone.” 

“_Leave_.” 

“Not happening.” Kyle shrugs. Then his eyes go wide. “Look out!” He shouts, already moving.

The wyrm spits a wad of acid at Mysterion. Kyle grabs him by his cape and tugs him down to the side and towards the floor, going down with him. 

The acid soars over their heads, burning a hole through a row of books on a tall shelf.

Kyle grins at him from the floor, their legs tangled in a heap. “See? You need me.”

“Go _ home_,” he snaps.

Kyle raises an eyebrow, nodding towards the giant acid-burned hole in the bookshelf. “You could say 'thanks.'”

Mysterion frowns at him. “You’re a smartass.” 

“You don’t know the half of it man,” Kyle says with a grin.

Untangling himself from Kyle, Mysterion stands up. He glares hard eyes at the redhead until he switches his focus to the wyrm. It’s not nearly as big as the bokrog or the scorpion had been but the whole acid-spitting thing might create some problems. He looks back over his shoulder so he can gauge where Kyle is, but the redhead is gone. 

It’d be stupid to assume he actually left. Kyle wouldn’t.

He’s hiding.

Mysterion will take what he can get. He starts making his way towards the wyrm, keeping his footsteps as quiet as he can.

He’s just about to charge at it when it comes for him, instead. 

The wyrm rears back on the fat end of its tail-body. The wet sound of acid collecting in its maw fills the air. Mysterion's waiting for it when the wad comes flying — muscles taut and ready to dodge.

A rough hand latches onto his arm and yanks him hard, tugging him back behind a row of books.

“Gotcha again,” Kyle says, pulling Mysterion into him as the acid lands, burning an angry hole through the wooden floor the hero had been occupying moments ago. “Alright?” He asks, and Mysterion can feel Kyle's chest against his back. There's no answer and Kyle continues, “That's a wyrm, right? It doesn't have ears, tracks by vibration, I read about it last week. We should be safe as long as we don’t move.”

Mysterion takes a careful, light step, and untwines himself from Kyle’s frame. He looks at him darkly. “_You _need to get out of here.”

The redhead huffs out a laugh. “Seriously? I just saved your life, again.”

“You're leaving, right now-”

“I'm not, so_ stop_-”

Mysterion rounds on him, pulls himself as tall as he can and lets a glower take over his eyes and jaw. He _ knows _he's intimidating like this, with the netherworld fog and the dark magic rolling through him.

But Kyle only raises his eyebrows at him. “You don't scare me, dude.”

The hero growls, frustrated beyond belief at this snarky redhead he's known his whole life but somehow this interaction feels so different— “You should be scared of_ that! _” He snaps, pointing to the wyrm slinking around the library, trying to find them and kill them.

“I’ve seen worse.” Kyle shrugs and smirks up at him. Mysterion's knees go weak. “Maybe we can corner it into the back room… Then you could probably get a good shot in.”

“_We _ aren't doing anything. _You _are staying here.” He keeps his voice gruff and deep.

“No, dude, I'm not. Give up.” The redhead thinks for a moment, and then like a firework going off behind them, his eyes light up. “Oh! I know, I got it. The chandelier.” Kyle points towards the library’s ceiling. “If you lead the wyrm into the middle of the room, I can cut the wires.”

Mysterion looks back from the ceiling to the redhead. “How the fuck are you going to do that?”

“Leave it to me.” He pats Mysterion on the upper arm. His hand stays there a bit too long, is a bit too warm. “Okay?”

“No.”

“Cool, I'm gonna go do it anyway.”

“_No!_”

Before Mysterion can even finish the single word, Kyle is heading out of the safety of the bookshelves.

The wyrm locks onto him immediately, honing into the vibrations of his footsteps, and if Mysterion doesn't move it'll kill him. Grinding his teeth, the hero steps out of the rows of shelves as well. Kyle's like this, Kyle is _ always _like this, and Kenny doesn't want him involved. 

But _ being involved _is Kyle Broflovski's goddamn middle name, has been since they were kids. He never quits. He never backs down. He’s always, always loud and vibrant and ready.

It's one of the reasons Kenny likes him so much. 

Mysterion looks up the stairs that lead to the second floor, which is open like a loft around the perimeter of the room. Kyle is already up there, climbing across the banister and reaching out for the chandelier with a knife gripped in his teeth. Where the hell did he get a knife? It's stupid and reckless and _ brave_. Mysterion is fucked — he looks up and watches Kyle reaching for the chandelier, not a hint of fear, only intense concentration as his fingertips just grace the gold-painted metal — and he knows it. He’s always known it, in the back of his head or whenever some shit went down as kids and Kyle was at the forefront, fighting for what he believes in —

But he knows it now in a doomed sort of way. He's never getting over this, _ he is never going to get over this guy_.

Mysterion watches the redhead's shirt ride up as he latches onto the chandelier. He makes a small leap, the light fixture swinging with the force of him landing on it.

Time to move.

Making sure his steps are heavy, Mysterion runs into the middle of the room. The wyrm follows straight away, its fat snake-body slugging across the hardwood floor, leaving a thick trail of slime behind it.

“Say when!” Kyle shouts from the chandelier.

As soon as the wyrm's in place, Mysterion calls, “_Now!_”

Gripping the wires hard, Kyle cuts each of them in quick succession. The chandelier starts crashing down, the redhead still on top of it, but Mysterion's already thought of that. He lets the mist hold the chandelier still long enough; a wisping trail that starts from behind his cape and wraps around twisting metal. Mysterion holds his arms out, a few feet from the crash site, and looks up at Kyle. “Right here!”

The redhead looks down at him with wide eyes.

“_Jump!_”

“Oh!”

Kyle does. He gets a haphazard grip with his sneakers on the falling object and he _leaps_. 

He drops into Mysterion's arms. The angle is awkward, Kyle falling half-twisted in the air, but the hero catches him and holds him tight; he ends up crashing down onto his ass, but keeps Kyle tucked into his body and away from the hard floor. Makes sure he doesn’t break an arm. The top of Kyle's head hits his chin, making Mysterion’s teeth rattle.

“Did it work?” Kyle asks, breathless, sprawled out on top of Mysterion, both of them on the floor. 

The hero looks over just as the chandelier slams down onto the wyrm. Blood and guts fly everywhere, along with pieces of glass and metal from the chandelier. Chunks of wyrm-flesh smack wetly against bookshelves and tables and splatter out across the waxed floors. The smell is the worst part. It’s like rotten meat and fungus.

“It worked,” Mysterion says, feeling dazed and fighting not to show it in his voice.

“Fuck,” Kyle hisses.

"What?"

“Something…” His hands go to the side of his head. “Something’s…”

The hero shifts to get a better look, Kyle still in his lap. Mysterion's eyes widen.

There's a large gash sliced into the side of Kyle's head. It's deep, the skin split clean, just under his hairline and behind his ear.

Blood starts to pour. Kenny’s had head wounds himself and knows, with all those veins around the skull, they bleed non-stop.

“What is it?” Kyle's voice sounds weak, delirious. Blood flows down to his shoulder, covering him in seconds, a gross reflection of the beautiful way the rain had only an hour ago.

Mysterion stands up, taking Kyle with him. He's not light and it takes some effort, but he lets the mist help.

“We're going to the hospital.”

“What? Are you hurt?” Kyle asks, eyelids closing and opening over and over. A gentle hand reaches up to Mysterion's face, touches at the side of one of his temples, fingertips pressing in. “_God_, your eyes…” 

And then Kyle passes out.

Mysterion tries his best not to panic. It never helps. He shifts Kyle onto his back and disappears in a shroud of mist. He's getting tired; his powers from R’lyeh are like any muscle, require energy and have limits - but he needs to hurry. At best Kyle's just suffering from blood loss, at worst he's concussed.

The nurses at the hospital know him pretty well. He's brought people here before, since he'd started a few months ago. They don't even blink when he shows up in a cloud of purple fog in the waiting room. The other patients gawk at him but Mysterion doesn't see anything; Kyle's breaths are weak against the back of his head. 

"We'll take care of him," the nurse who greets him says while they put Kyle on a stretcher, "Is he a friend?"

"Yes," Mysterion breathes out, not thinking of the consequences. The nurses won't spread it around. They know not to.

She nods at him, a hand on his wrist. "We'll put him in three-fifteen, give us a few hours."

They take Kyle away on the stretcher, and Mysterion stands there stupidly watching until he’s gone around a corner.

The hero goes to the roof. He can't think of anywhere else to go. Like fuck he's going home, waiting around for someone to tell him Kyle's hurt so he can head to the hospital as Kenny without it seeming weird. No, someone will call his mom and she'll come, Stan in tow, and after that...

"Idiot," he says, sitting behind a half-wall that goes the full way around the roof. He digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. "Fuck." He _ has _ to convince Kyle to stop helping. It's nothing at all if Mysterion dies, he just comes back and that's the _ whole point _of being the one risking his life. There's no risk. But Kyle's too stubborn. He won't quit, Kenny knows it like he knows every single one of his smiles, or the way his voice cracks when he's pissed off and yelling.

But he has to try.

Mysterion waits on the roof until nightfall.

Once it's dark, he drops down the side of the building and sneaks in through the window of room 315. The nurse had left it open for him. She must know that Kyle's someone special to him. Kenny must have shown it on his face.

Kyle's awake when he climbs in. He's on his phone. His green eyes snap wide the second Mysterion’s climbing through his window. There’s a line of black stitches over the fresh cut, the skin around it angry and red, but otherwise he looks fine.

“Yeah dude, I'm okay .... Look I gotta go- Shut up .... _ Yes_, okay?” A frown as he waits while the other person talks. “Stan, I'm hanging up.” He ends the call and sets his phone on the plastic table next to the hospital bed. 

Kyle looks at him, his expression unreadable. “I didn't expect to see you.” 

Mysterion leans back against the wall behind him, next to the window. “I came here to tell you to stop getting involved,” he says, his tone serious. “That's all.”

Kyle purses his lips for a minute, studying the hero up and down. Looking determined from his spot sat on the bed, he opens his mouth. “When we were thirteen years old, my friend Craig turned out to be the reincarnated saviour of a Peruvian Flute Cult and we traveled through a Peruvian jungle for _ sixteen _ days, fought off an insane FBI agent, and rid the world of man-eating giant guinea pigs. He has superpowers too, just so you know, if you ever wanted some help.” Here Kyle pauses, waiting for a reply that doesn’t come. Rolling his eyes only slightly he continues. “Another time, a guy I know turned into a giant homunculus after he amalgamated himself to a fucking _ trapper keeper. _” Kyle narrows two green eyes on him, pupils dilated fully. “My point is- I can handle myself.”

Mysterion still doesn't reply. He already knows all of this. 

“Look,” Kyle starts, shifting on the bed to face the hero fully, swinging his legs down the side of the thin mattress, “I’ve been doing a lot of research. There’s a portal open somewhere, right? To R’lyeh? That's where the monsters are coming from.” 

They look at each other for a beat of silence. At length Mysterion speaks, folding his arms and leaning back against the wall behind him. “You’ll get hurt,” he says. “Again,” he adds, looking at the stitches sewn over his ear.

Kyle doesn't reply right away. He's looking up at him, searching all through his eyes. Mysterion frowns harder at him while his chest goes warm, fighting to keep himself together. 

Without warning, the redhead slips out of bed. His socked feet touch the floor and he’s moving, wordless and unabashed. He's wearing a new change of clothes, probably courtesy of his mother, and he’s biting at his bottom lip, which Mysterion doesn’t let himself think about.

Kyle takes a few steps towards him.

The hero’s frozen in place. Kyle’s beautiful, with his pronounced nose and his red curls and the way his eyes are just a little bit too far apart. He’s beautiful because he doesn't listen, doesn’t do what he’s fucking told; because he has his own ideas and his own moral code and he doesn’t let anything or anyone stop him.

His fingers are gentle when they wrap around Mysterion’s wrist and back him further up against the wall. His voice is low, muted softly between them. “So will _ you_,” Kyle says, gripping his wrist tight and leaning up, just a bit.

Mysterion stands as still as a statue, though his body is all but screaming at him to move. He holds himself together, trying to get his brain to stop short circuiting, trying to think through the fog that’s got a hold of him under forest-green eyes. 

“That doesn't matter.”

Kyle looks sad and angry all at once. "Of course it does," he says.

Mysterion shakes his head, looking down at the hand still around his wrist. The wall against his back is solid and grounding. “You don't understand.”

“Then _ explain _ it to me.” The redhead drops his wrist, waving his hands a bit frantically. “Use your words. _ More _than three at a time.”

“_I can't die_,” Mysterion hears himself say, not meaning to, not wanting to, but he can't think of any other way to get Kyle to back off, is getting desperate, “I'm immortal.”

“What?” Kyle asks.

“When I die, I just come back. Every time. Ever since I was a kid.” Outside, Mysterion hears wind whip by the open window, ten stories up from the streets below. “So I don't need you to save me.”

-

Kyle stays quiet for a minute, his mouth hanging open in confusion. It never takes him very long to process the unexpected — his whole _ life _has been a practice in processing the unexpected. Eventually he claps his mouth shut and his face loses its wonder. Gesturing with his hands as he speaks, he looks up at the hero. “But it still hurts, right? Getting beaten up, or stabbed and killed.” He raises a single eyebrow at him. “How many times have you died? How do you know there's no limit? Maybe after the hundredth time-”

“_Thousands._"

“Okay,” Kyle squints his eyes at him, “maybe after the ten _ thousandth _time, it's the end. Ten thousand one and you're dead forever.”

“That's not how it works.”

“Do you really know that?” He asks, but no answer comes. Kyle shrugs. “It doesn't matter, anyway. I don't want you to do this alone.”

“Why?” Mysterion’s arms are still folded and he digs his fingers into his skin. “You don't even know me.”

Kyle frowns at him, but the expression feels more like a sad pout on his lips. Who the heck is this guy? Who thinks about themselves like they’re just some tool to be used? Just because it won’t stick in his case doesn’t mean he _ has _ to die over and over again. It doesn’t mean he’s expendable. But with the way Mysterion is digging into his own skin like that, and the faint trails of violet mist that sneak out in around his back and hands, it’s starting to look like that’s _ exactly _what he thinks.

“It's just...” Kyle starts, reaching out for the hero. He takes his hands, unfolding the arms he has locked against his chest. Kyle’s breath catches when Mysterion doesn’t pull away; the mist floating around them is cool. “You shouldn't _ have _to go through it alone. It sucks going through shit alone. And I've always kept this town safe, that’s just… normal.” It's the truth — most of it. Kyle's also rapidly developing a crush but who the fuck could blame him? Mister tall dark and brooding, pretending he doesn't care when Kyle can tell he does or he wouldn't be saving the whole goddamn city, wouldn't be so upset that Kyle's trying to involve himself, wouldn’t be silently trying to martyr himself with no one around to notice. 

There’s no reply from the hero, and Kyle’s a bit too nervous to look back up into his eyes. He keeps his gaze locked on the death-grip he’s got on his hands.

Kyle remembers being tucked into Mysterion’s chest, that first day in the mall. He'd been overpowering and daunting and tall and warm. He remembers the night outside of the gas station, pinning down the scorpion's blue tail and the rolling fog that had encased him — otherworldly and dark to be sure, but somehow captivating and safe. Kyle can remember, too, hours ago when Mysterion had caught him in his arms, had called for him to jump down and then held him in tight; how he stood close behind the bookshelf, encasing Kyle with his taller frame and wide cape, keeping him out of harm's way.

Kyle's helpless against stuff like this. It’s not his fault. It doesn’t need to go anywhere, and it’s not the reason he’s being so insistent.

His eyes fall up to Mysterion's mouth, then down to his neck and his chest; his long arms and big hands. Ones that Kyle's still holding, ones that have held him.

“You're staring,” the hero says, breaking the long silence. His voice is barely above a whisper, matches the stillness of the dark room around them. 

Kyle’s face goes hot as he tries to speak, “I…” He swallows, his words dying in his throat. He drags his gaze up into dark violet eyes, and knows his face is bright red.

Mysterion's expression falters, along with his serious demeanour. He almost takes a step forward. Kyle knows it, he _ sees _it, the tension in his muscles as he starts to move.

But the hero collects himself. He goes stiff, presses himself back against the wall, and pulls his hands out of Kyle’s.

“You need to back out,” Mysterion says in his rough voice, glaring at him. “I'm not asking again.”

With that, he leaves out the window, vanishing into the night. Kyle watches the tail-end of his cape disappear and wonders — if he’d asked — if Mysterion would have stayed.

* * *

Kyle is let out of the hospital the following morning, the six stitches along the side of his head throbbing, but otherwise unharmed. His mother had freaked out, Stan had joined her, and together they'd both scolded him while the nurses watched and laughed good-naturedly.

Kenny hadn't even _ texted _him. 

When Kyle asked about it, Stan said he hadn't heard from Kenny in weeks, and they'd both shared a Look.

When Kenny disappears for weeks at a time, Kyle, Stan, or both of them go check up on him. One time — just once, Kyle reminds himself — it was a drug overdose. Once had been enough to make him paranoid for life, though. 

He’s fine. He’s probably home taking care of his sister, who’s probably been sick this whole time. That’s usually what it is. 

It’s not weird and he doesn’t need to feel weird about it. It’s normal to check up on your friends. It’s normal to care. 

But.

The thing is… 

A long time ago, a really _ really _long time ago, he used to have a crush on Kenny. 

It was awful. Kenny was always with someone - that’s just how he is - and he’d never asked Kyle to be one of those someones. Not once. Kyle’s pretty sure Kenny’s given a handjob to most of the guys they know and he’s definitely kissed a lot of them. He’d watched him kiss Stan, a dare courtesy of Red who thought the black-haired boy needed to loosen up a bit. 

His conclusion, logically, was that Kenny didn’t find him attractive. Kyle gets it. The girls had made that list and shoe conspiracy or not, he’d been on the bottom. He'd spent all of elementary school and some of junior high thinking his way out of that crush. It wasn’t real — it _ isn’t. _It's an old habit, at this point, if there’s anything left of it at all.

Drawing parallels, Kenny and Mysterion are total opposites. Mysterion's dark and brooding and Kenny's brighter than the sun. Kyle wonders how they'd get along with each other. He wonders why he'd ask a question like that, and why the thought of both at once makes his heart shoot into his mouth. 

Feeling nervous, Kyle walks around the house and knocks on Kenny’s front door. There’s no answer, which isn’t a surprise. It’s nearing dusk which is usually when his parents are too blazed-out to care. He sneaks over the fence, around the back, and through the old tunnel. They’d forced Kenny to keep it open years ago, after the OD. Just so Kyle could sleep at night. 

“Kenny?” He calls into the dark of his bedroom closet, where the tunnel lets out. There’s no answer. “I’m coming in.” 

Sliding the busted closet door, Kyle steps into the rundown bedroom. 

Kenny is on his bed in sweats and a bright blue tshirt, lying flat on his back with one hand resting on his stomach. His eyes are closed, brow wet with way too much sweat, and his skin looks almost green. 

“Jesus-” Kyle half-trips in his rush across the room. 

The blond’s eyes crack open. He looks like he doesn’t know where he is, and that scares Kyle more than anything. 

“_Kenny_,” he says, falling on his knees on the floor, right up against the side of the bed. 

“Kyle?” 

“What’s-” Kyle’s tongue ties up in his mouth. “What the fuck-”

“What’re you doing here?” 

“Are you alright?” Kyle asks, ignoring Kenny’s question because it doesn’t make any goddamn sense and he’s soaked with sweat and he looks dazed, dizzy, like he’s not all there. 

Kenny shift and sits up on his bed. “Uh-” 

“You’re hot,” Kyle says, touching his bare arm. 

“No, no, I’m okay.”

“Bullshit.” Kyle frowns and digs his phone out of his back pocket. “You need to go to the hospital. I’ll call Stan, he can drive us.” 

“No.” Kenny reaches out and takes Kyle’s wrist. His hand is as cold as a corpse’s and a chill runs through him. There’s something almost ghostly about Kenny’s eyes when they focus in on him. “Kyle...” 

“Dude if it’s drugs the nurses won’t care,” he snaps, glaring at his friend.

“It’s not drugs. I’m not sick or anything. I’m just tired.” 

“Don’t fucking _ lie _to me, you giant asshole.” 

“I haven’t touched anything but pot in years.” Kenny looks hurt despite the fog in his eyes. “You _ know _ that.” 

Kyle’s stomach sinks with heavy guilt. They had talked about it years ago, the drugs, all three of them. Kenny had promised them he’d be more careful and he always has been. “Then what the hell is going on?” Kyle asks, his voice breaking apart. “Have you been eating? You look-” he pauses, unsure of what word to use; ‘like a ghost’ just seems weird. “You don’t look right.” 

Kenny opens his mouth and shuts it. His expression turns tired, serious, something Kyle’s seen before but always pretends he never had.

“Just one,” the blond says, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. He drops them into his lap and they’re clean, almost too clean, like new. Dark blue eyes look at Kyle. Had they always been that colour? “Give me one.”

“One what? ” Kyle asks, feeling out of depth.

“Free pass.” Kenny smiles at him, but it’s one of his fake ones, the kind he throws around when his home-life gets shitty and he doesn’t want to talk about it. “I can’t lie to you, you’re too smart. But I can’t tell you the truth.” 

Kyle glares at him. 

Kenny drops the fake smile. He sighs. “Don’t ask any questions. Okay? Just this once. I swear to god I’m alright.”

Kyle hates this. His eyes are pretty, the sun-freckles and the gap in his teeth and the way his adam’s apple moves are familiar; just like the movement of his knuckles as he wrings his hands together in his lap. Everything Kenny does is on repeat in Kyle’s mind and he tries to shove it down, put it away, lock it up. There’s an abbreviation of Kenny he’d stored in some part of himself years and years ago back when they were thirteen and Kyle had noticed the bright way the sun made Kenny look like he glowed and he’d grinned with all of his teeth and told Kyle he was really smart, probably the smartest kid in school,_ and with you by my side maybe even a guy like me could—_

“Fine,” Kyle snaps, stamping the memory out. “But I’m not leaving you alone like this.” 

The blond stares at him, a rare moment of mild surprise before he breaks into a grin. “You gonna take care of me?” 

“Don’t push it.” 

Kenny smiles even wider, this one real, and leans towards Kyle over his bed, staring. “How could I say no to those beautiful green eyes?” 

“You can’t,” Kyle says, deadpanned. 

“You’re right," Kenny says, smiling. 

Kenny flirts with him, he always has, but Kenny flirts with everyone. It doesn’t mean anything. But Kyle’s tired. He’s tired from thinking about Mysterion, wondering who he is, wondering about wanting to kiss him and why his dark eyes seem so familiar. 

And Kenny’s his friend, right? He’d do this for Stan just as easily.

“Move over,” Kyle says, standing up and setting one knee on the bed. 

“You coming in?” 

The question hangs in the air. It’s not like they’ve never done it before — They have done it _ once _before. It's nothing, nothing, he repeats to himself like a mantra. 

“Is that okay?” Kyle asks, his throat going tight on the question.

“Come here,” Kenny says and his cheeky grin falters but Kyle pretends he doesn’t notice. “You’re a babe, Kyle, I’m honoured.” 

“You’re a dumbass,” he says, moving his knee off the bed. “I’ll be right back.”

Turning on his heels, Kyle leaves his room.

He gets a cloth from the bathroom and soaks it with cool water. Once he's done, he heads back to Kenny’s room.

The mattress is old and groans as Kyle sits down on its edge. Some of the springs are broken, but it’s good anyway. Keeping his lips pressed firmly together, he sets the cool cloth under a blond hairline, along a warm forehead.

“Oh that’s nice,” Kenny says, sighing softly. 

After a beat, Kyle sets his fingers in his hair, playing with the sun-coloured strands.

Kenny hums. “How’d I get this lucky?” 

“You should be in a hospital.” 

“Pretty sure I’m dreaming,” he says, taking a deep breath and sighing again. 

The sound goes all the way to Kyle’s toes and makes the hair at his nape stand on end. It’s nothing, he reminds himself, just that stupid idea of Kenny McCormick he’d made up as a kid.

There’s a long silence before Kenny speaks up again. “I thought you were gonna come in,” he says, his voice hoarse, “Don’t tease a guy.”

It’s nothing, nothing. He’d do this for Stan. 

Kyle's breathing holds as still as death as he lies himself down along Kenny’s bed.

-

Kenny nearly faints. He didn't think it would work — Kyle _ never _ does this — only once in the history of their friendship has Kenny gotten him in his bed. It was at the start of high school. Kenny had died and stayed dead for six months, the longest time to date. Kyle doesn’t remember that part, he’d just showed up the first night Kenny was back and asked if he could spend the night. Kenny had made a joke about it but Kyle looked fucking _ furious _ with him over it so he’d apologized and said _ yeah, sure, of course _as casually as he could manage.

That was… 

Kenny doesn’t let himself think about it. Kyle’s always been perceptive, so he just figured he could sense that his friend had been gone without really _ knowing _it. He doesn’t try to draw any more meaning from it than that; he’s already got enough masochistic tendencies.

It doesn’t mean he hasn’t gotten off to the memory of Kyle’s breath on his neck about five thousand times since then.

And right now? The fact that he’d just woken up from death to find Kyle in his room? 

Fucking gold. 

From that very first time, from that one time, Kenny has memorized the way Kyle slots into his arms, the music of his heartbeat, the time between each of his breaths. The warm way he smells like calm summer nights and all the years of memories it brings up.

"Can I…" Kenny starts, barely able to keep his tone casual and together let anyone finish the question.

But Kyle nods, not looking at him. Instead he’s staring over the top of his blond head at the wall, lips pressed firmly shut.

Slowly, Kenny sets two hands on the redhead's back. He pulls himself in, tucking his head under Kyle's chin. He takes a careful breath, not wanting to seem obvious and feels Kyle go stiff for a moment. Reacting with his whole body like always. 

"Alright?"

Kyle nods, and his fingers find Kenny's hair again.

Dying sucks. It’s cold and loose and lonely and then he wakes up in hell and burns there until Death, on some whim of the universe, decides to let him go.

It’d be worth it every time, though, if he always got to wake up like this.

It’s got to be some kind of cruel joke, but he can _ see _ the way Kyle looks at him when he’s Mysterion. It isn’t hard to work out what the redhead likes about his hero persona. Mysterion stands for things Kyle cares about. He’s out on the streets dealing with the monsters that come through the portal, and he’s got more than a few layers of pathos to sift through — something he generally tries to just ignore as Kenny. There’s mystery surrounding the hero; he’s someone new in this old rundown town. And Mysterion is _ part _ of who he is — he’s not faking it. But it isn’t all of him and the parts of him that are just Kenny had rotted away to nothing when he was a kid. Whatever Kyle _ thinks _he likes, it’s not the full truth. It's an illusion.

He won’t do it to Kyle. The redhead’s gonna soar out of here and _ be _someone and Kenny’s not going to get in his way.

He’ll take what he can get like this, and won’t ask for more as some other version of himself. 

* * *

Kyle doesn’t know Stan’s aunt very well, but Stan had asked him and Kenny to be his plus ones and Kyle’s not the kind of person to let a friend down. Though he _ had tried _to argue with him to ask Leo since Stan’s got a crush a mile long for the guy, but Stan had gone as red as the pom on his winter hat and begged Kyle to shut up about it. 

It’s a generic wedding. Kyle’s only been to one other one. They’re in the church hall, everything is white and silver, and the bride’s dress is white. Kyle thinks if he ever gets married, he wants to do something outside the box. Just a little. 

Maybe a lot. 

There’s something annoying about conformity, uniformity. About doing what you’re supposed to. 

Stan had told him once he has a problem with authority, thanks to his mother. 

Seems about right to Kyle. 

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…” 

_ God, it even starts like that? _He thinks to himself. He zones out, his mind drifting easily to what it’s been focused on for weeks now. 

Sitting at the back of the church hall, Stan nudges his shoulder and whispers, "Anymore run-ins with your tall, dark and handsome _ superhero_?"

“Shut up,” Kyle hisses back, abashed that his friend had essentially pulled the thought from his mind.

On his other side, Kenny is silent, but this is normal.

“So?”

“So _ what_, Stan.”

“You never like anyone, Kyle.” He digs his elbow into Kyle’s side. “C'mon dude, fill me in.”

“Nothing happened.”

“Really?” Stan nudges him again. “Kenny, help me out here.”

The blond turns to face them, a small grin on his face. “Let me know if he gives good head.”

Stan snorts out a laugh.

“Nice, Ken,” Kyle says rolling his eyes. Stan's still looking at him and he sighs. “What d'you want me to say?”

“He was the one who brought you to the clinic, right?” 

Kyle nods.

“Anyone who keeps you alive is okay in my books,” Stan says. When Kyle doesn’t continue, he speaks up again. “You have a supernatural boyfriend, of course I'm excited, I am all about your happiness-”

“He doesn't want me around,” Kyle says, cutting his best friend off. “I don't think he hates me or anything…” He thinks back to Mysterion standing by the window, watching Kyle looking at him, the low way he'd said _ You're staring _like he wasn't aware he'd been talking— “But I definitely piss him off.”

“Naw,” Kenny says, leaning back on the pew and looking up at the high ceiling. “He's probably just worried you'll get your head blown clean off. Those monsters are fucked.”

Kyle frowns, remembering the day Kenny had run away and left him at the _ mercy _of one of those monsters. “Yeah,” he says, “But he doesn't need to do this alone. The three of us have dealt with worse, and I've saved his life at least six times by now.” He spaces out, remembering.

“You really like him,” Stan says, peering at him with wide eyes.

Kyle opens his mouth and shuts it. Stan must’ve seen something on his face. Heat crawls up his throat, making it hard to talk. “When I'm with him - it feels like…” He trails off and starts again, looking across the hall towards the wedding ceremony. The bride is crying. “When I look at him, I know him.”

Kenny and Stan are both quiet. Eventually, Kyle turns to look. Kenny's got his eyes closed, almost like he's not listening, almost like he's tired.

Stan's staring at him in absolute awe. “It's not like you to be so romantic, dude.”

“Are you _blushing_?” Kyle gawks.

“You're being cute!”

“Stop!” He shoves Stan on the shoulder.

“You're usually all logical and shit.” His best friend laughs, looking at Kyle’s irritated expression. “Hey, It's fine. You _ like _someone, that's good,” Stan says, smiling. “If he hurts you I'll kick his ass.”

Kyle snorts. 

The wedding goes on, and they fall into silence. Kyle hasn't thought about it too hard, his feelings or what Mysterion might think of them. If there are demons coming to South Park from an alternate dimension, it goes without saying that _ that _problem comes first. 

After a few minutes, Stan leans over again. “Who do you think he is?” he asks, his voice quiet and curious.

Looking mildly at the wooden church pews, Kyle replies. “Someone new.”

They fade back into silence, watching the ceremony with passing interest. Kyle takes a few breaths to clear his head.

Just as the groom leans in to kiss the bride, a loud roar breaks through the church hall.

Kyle goes on alert, as do his friends beside him.

Wooden siding splits apart around a window’s edges as a beast breaks through the stained glass. Its front paws come first, taking shards of glass with them, followed by a large canine body.

The beast has no fur, only bloody red skin and rows and rows of teeth like a shark. 

Kyle stands up in an instant while the hall erupts into screams. Stan’s beside him, and when Kyle looks around, Kenny's gone again.

There’s no time to think about it, no time to wonder, but what the _ hell_.

Kyle watches as the entire hall empties, people running and screaming, cramming themselves out the double-door exit until the hall is empty. Save for the hellhound and them.

Beside him, Stan’s scanning the room for violet. “I don’t see him,” he says.

Kyle’s teeth grind with tension, “He’ll be here. C’mon, we can distract it.”

“Why’s it always us, man?” Stan laments as his friend tugs him _ towards _danger, as he has so many times before.

Luckily, they’re saved the hassle. Mysterion comes crashing through the busted window, his cape flying out behind him and his brow set heavy. He lands hard on the wooden floor, the sound echoing through the empty pews.

Kyle catches his eyes but the hero doesn’t acknowledge him.

Not that Kyle needs him to.

Ignoring the hero right back, Kyle heads to the front of the hall where the hellhound had gone, Stan just behind him.

“You both need to get out of here!” Mysterion shouts from the far-side wall.

Kyle doesn’t respond, but Stan speaks up. “Give up! Trust me, he’s not gonna listen.”

Mysterion glares at them, but there isn’t time; the hellhound isn’t giant but it’s quick. The hero has to dodge left and right, using mist to both blind the demon and try to attack it.

Kyle looks around the room, trying to come up with a plan. Maybe, if they could trap it…

“Do you think holy water would work?” Stan asks beside him.

“Oh. Good idea.” 

Without a word, Kyle heads towards the front of the church. The priest keeps the holy water in a font under the front pedestal; he grabs it and scans the room. 

Kyle locks eyes onto the hound and makes a run for it. He drops to his back and slides under the animal, grabbing onto its black collar to stop himself. It’s breath reeks as it barks into his face.

Gritting his teeth, Kyle yanks on the collar and splashes the water up into the hound’s ugly red eyes.

The beast doesn’t flinch. It doesn’t even _ blink_.

Sixteen rows of razor sharp teeth unhinge and move to sink through Kyle’s throat.

“Oh fu-”

A flash of violet replaces the hound’s body. Mysterion tackles it off of Kyle, rolling across the hardwood floor of the church in a tangle with the beast.

“You idiot!” Mysterion shouts from the floor, wrangling the hound to keep it down.

“It could’ve worked!”

“It’s not real holy water!” 

“How the fuck would I know?!” 

Mysterion grunts with effort as the dog snaps at his face, holding it back at arms’ length. “This is why you shouldn’t be-” 

The hound gets the better of him. It unhinges his jaw, giving it a few extra inches, and sinks its teeth into Mysterion’s shoulder.

“Shit!” Kyle yells as the hero groans in pain. He’s moving before he realizes it. His sneakers squeak on the floor as he runs his heart out, diving for the beast. He full-body tackles it off Mysterion, right into the wall, pushing the hound into it as hard as he can. Mysterion’s on his knees holding his bloody shoulder, watching him with wide eyes.

“STAN!” Kyle shouts. “Maxi keeps a shotgun in the-”

“Right!” 

Stan disappears into the basement.

The hellhound snaps its jaw at him, drool hitting Kyle in the face. “Yeah yeah,” he says, glaring at it and holding it up away with all the strength he has.

Mysterion drops down beside him. He grabs onto the hound too, pushing it into the wall while it barks and growls at them. “You need to leave,” he says, effort straining his voice.

They’re side by side on the floor, both sets of their hands on the hound trying to keep it still and keep those teeth away.

“I just saved your life!” Kyle snaps.

“I don’t need you to!”

“Yes you do! You can't just keep _ dying —_ _alone —_ It's not fucking fair!"

“It's not about it being fair!”

“You don't deserve-”

“You don't _ know _me!”

“I do!” Kyle’s voice rasps, dog teeth dangerously close to his face, “I know what it's like to do shit alone! So fuck off and let me HELP!”

Mysterion stares at him, wordless, his lips parted with slight wonder.

The hound slips up over their hands. It leaps halfway across the room, its nails scraping on the wooden floor as it turns to face them again.

Mysterion looks at him still, not glaring, not glowering. Instead he looks sad. When he speaks there is clear desperation in his words. “Please,” he says, “I need you to leave.”

Kyle catches his eyes with his own and holds his gaze in a world of violet. He shakes his head. “I _ can't_. I can't leave you alone,” he says.

Stan comes running up the stairs with the shotgun. He has a perfect shot and takes it, breaking through their weighted words and the demon’s head. It gets the beast right between the eyes, exploding its skull into a million pieces. Its guts go everywhere. It’s disgusting, and Kyle’s thankful the only spot where he’s hit is on the side of one of his sneakers.

“_Sick_, dude,” Stan says, lowering the gun. “You both alright?” 

Mysterion stands up, his sad expression gone. He just looks blank. Almost tired.

Kyle gets up with him and frowns at his shoulder. “You’re hurt.” 

“Leave it.” 

“Ha, no.” He looks over at his friend. “Stan, tell the cops and the reporters he already left. Okay?”

“Sure thing,” he says with an easy wave. 

Kyle grabs Mysterion by the hand, holding tight. “Come on, caped-wonder.”

-

Mysterion lets himself be dragged down to the church’s basement. He’s dizzy from blood loss and Kyle had nearly _ died _and now Kyle’s holding his hand and he’s helpless to fight it. It’s warm where his fingers hold on tight.

Kyle sets him down on the floor with his back propped up against a large cushion from some discarded couch. Mysterion holds in a groan as the torn-apart muscles of his shoulder are forced to work.

“Stay here, I’m getting the first aid kit.” Two sharp eyes narrow in on him from the basement’s exit. “Don’t fucking go anywhere.”

Mysterion doesn’t reply. He feels warm blood work its way down his arm, sticking uncomfortably under his uniform. He looks down at his hand. Kenny has thought about holding Kyle’s hand for a cool decade or so. Can’t believe it keeps happening. 

Kyle comes back with a first aid kit and some water. The fabric around Mysterion’s shoulder is torn to pieces, and he starts cleaning it with gauze and antiseptic.

“My name’s Kyle, not that you ever asked,” the redhead says, keeping his eyes focused on his work.

“I don’t want you to help,” Mysterion says, watching the dexterous fingers clean the wound. Kyle ignores him. Frowning, Mysterion grabs the hand at his shoulder and waits for Kyle to look up at him. “It’s dangerous.”

“How many times do you plan on having this conversation?” Kyle says, meeting his glare with one of his own. They hold each other's gaze, both with heat and concern, with determination; Kyle waits until Mysterion lets him go. Then he goes back to his task.

“I was supposed to do this alone,” Mysterion says. 

“Yeah, well.” Kyle squints at the deep teeth marks sliced through his shoulder, working meticulously. “That’s stupid.” 

Mysterion breathes out slowly. He can smell Kyle’s shampoo and it’s making his head go fuzzy. He looks at his neck, his chest- 

And stops. Now is _ not _a good time for a boner.

“There,” Kyle says once the wound is cleaned. “I’ll do my best to bandage it.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Shut up. I’m doing it.”

It stings when the dry gauze hits the cuts, but Kyle’s next to him again, just under Mysterion’s eyes and nose. He’s sitting on his knees, tucked near his side, and Mysterion can’t stop himself from shifting a little closer.

“Alright,” Kyle says, letting him go. “There.”

The basement is dark, with small windows near the ceiling that let hardly enough light in. Dust floats through the air in the stillness.

Mysterion should leave, but he doesn’t.

“Thank you,” he says. 

The redhead smiles. A confident one. A real one. “You’re welcome.”

They’re close, and Mysterion keeps his eyes locked onto green ones. He won't get another moment like this with Kyle Broflovski. Kyle’s gonna either marry Stan or find someone else and marry them, move away and go to law school or take the world by storm in some other way. 

Kyle looks right back at him, the silence ringing out, and his eyes drop to his mouth. Mysterion’s stomach flips over along with his whole world. His head goes hazy, surrounded by the smell of his deodorant and shampoo and that summer smell that’s just Kyle. Mysterion thinks of pressing his face into the crook of his neck, that night he'd come back from death and Kyle had been there, in his bed. 

A warm hand slips along his jaw, careful and sure. Kyle’s thumb runs along the side of his face and Mysterion’s knees go weak.

“I… um,” the redhead starts, eyes darting back and forth as they search violet ones. Kyle looks down at his mouth again and licks his lips, unconsciously, shyly, something Mysterion’s never seen him do. Oh god. Fuck him, he's so pretty, he's so lovely, with his wild red hair and muted determination blaring through the rare shyness, what's he supposed to _ do? _This is different from what Kenny has done before, this isn't a random makeout session in someone's basement or behind the bleachers at school when he was a teenager; this is Kyle and Kyle wants to kiss him.

Kyle wants to kiss Mysterion.

It takes every ounce of self-discipline to stop himself, and Kenny does _ not _have a lot of practice with holding himself back. 

Mysterion grabs the hand Kyle has along his jaw and shakes his head. That’s about all he can manage, but it’s enough.

The redhead goes as stiff as a board. “Sorry, I-”

“You don’t know who I am.” 

Kyle looks through his eyes again, his lips parted slightly and he's still close. His voice is full of air, light and breathless. “That’s… That’s alright. I don’t care-” 

“_I _do,” Mysterion says, holding his hand tighter. 

“Oh.” Kyle doesn’t move. His eyes are glazed over and they hold Mysterion’s gaze evenly although they look lost. Kenny can’t deal with the idea that Mysterion’s the cause of it. That Kyle would have any kind of reaction to any part of him at all. 

But it isn’t for _ him_, not all of him, and that’s not good enough. Not for Kyle. Kyle deserves the whole of someone, the truth.

“Hey,” The redhead starts, shifting on his knees. 

Feeling lightheaded, the hero barely makes a sound, “Hm?” 

Kyle leans in further, until his chest almost touches his shoulder, and Mysterion thinks he's going to die right there, on the spot, from how hard his heart is trying to blow out of him. Kyle slips his fingers into the spaces of Mysterion’s gloved hand, twining them together. He holds his hand tight. 

“You don’t deserve to die over and over again, just because it wont stick,” he says. “You’re not expendable. Alright?”

Mysterion doesn't reply. He looks back at him and keeps his mouth shut tight.

“I just… I don’t know if no one’s ever told you that or what," Kyle continues. Dropping his hand, he moves to sit with his back against the wall, next to the hero. The lack of contact has Mysterion's chest aching, but it's better this way. "You’re…” He shakes his head, trying to clear it. Kyle grips at his knees. There are cuts all over his hands from fighting with the hellhound and it's here Mysterion rests his eyes, unable to look directly at him. “You act like you think you’re worthless.” 

This is the cruelest sort of hell, Kenny thinks from under the hood and cape. Worse than the actual place itself. He's probably wanted to hear someone say that to him his whole _ life_. No one's noticed, not when he's just Kenny.

"I _ am _expendable," Mysterion says, "That's the point."

Kyle rolls his eyes. "Are there any side-effects to hellhound bites? Maybe heightened stupidity?" 

"You're a smartass," the hero says.

“So I’ve been told.”

“I don't want you to die, okay? Is that what you want to hear?”

"Everyone dies." Kyle looks across the room, at a stack of old paintings piled against the far wall. Mysterion watches his mouth move as he talks. "It's the single biggest joke in the universe." His hands grip at his knees again, and he looks down at his lap for a moment. After a short pause, silence Mysterion doesn't know how to fill, doesn't think he should, Kyle speaks again. "I'm not afraid of it. There's shit I want to do and if it gets me killed- it's worth it."

Kyle's braver than he is. Mysterion's known it just as long as he's known him. It's easy enough to risk dying when you know death never lasts. 

"Sorry," the redhead says, his hands spreading out in his lap. "I probably sound like I'm peacocking, or something." Kyle laughs, awkward and nervous, his shoulder bumping against the hero's. 

Mysterion opens his mouth, pauses for a moment because he shouldn't say this — but his lips move all on their own. "It's working," he says, and looks at Kyle with a small smirk. He can't help it. Kenny flirts with Kyle all the time but the fact that he's going to finally react positively to it is too much of a temptation, dangling right in front of him. 

He doesn't have to let it go anywhere.

Kyle's face goes bright red and he looks up at him, green eyes vibrant even in the stale light of the church basement. "Oh." He swallows and Mysterion watches his adam's apple along his throat. "Yeah?" 

"Yeah," Mysterion says, still smirking.

Kyle's expression crumbles. "That's not fair." He starts to frown, but the expression keeps falling apart, "If you're not going to let me..." he waves a hand by way of filling in the words he doesn't speak. "Then don't do that."

"Don't do what?" Mysterion's smirk grows even longer.

The redhead does frown at him then, fully. "You _ know _what."

"Do I?"

"Yeah, you do." Kyle kicks him with his foot. "Asshole."

The hero looks at Kyle, head angled down and heart pounding in his chest. It's so strong and loud and sure of itself is almost hurts. It's the same sort of throbbing he feels before he dies, urgent and unrelenting. Mysterion has to take a deep breath. "I still don't want you involved," he says, trying to keep his tone dark even though he rushes to get the words out.

Kyle's expression reads 'done' in every sense of the word.

Mysterion rises to his feet. If he stays here, in this dingy old basement with Kyle Broflovski, things are definitely going to go somewhere. 

Kyle shakes his head, standing up with him. He sighs as he pats dusts off his pants. "Way to ruin the mood."

"I have to go."

Kyle's whole body snaps to alert. He levels his gaze up at violet eyes, ready for anything. "Is there another one?"

"You're not coming with me."

Kyle grins. "Yeah, I am."

It's a Leng Spider, this time, a purple beast the size of a horse. It's prowling around the graveyard behind the strip bar. Mysterion does most of the fighting, Kyle ducking behind crumbling gravestones and distracting the monster when he can. But he is exactly where he needs to be, every single time, and Kenny's never felt a high quiet like this before, watching the redhead jump out at the spider with fearless fire in his eyes. He waits for Kyle to create an opening for Mysterion to attack and it's almost like dancing, fighting side by side. He's _ never _felt like he wanted a partner, in all the times he's gone out to do this alone.

Not until now.

* * *

Mysterion sneaks out the tunnel through his bedroom a few nights later. His powers had woken him up. Lying in bed, the mist had started seeping out of his hands, tugging him towards his window. He could feel the portal calling to him, the echo and reach of R'lyeh. 

It’s still open, hiding somewhere in South Park, and he needs to close it. That had been the point from the start, the reason he’d brought Mysterion back in the first place. 

The mist leads him to Stark’s Pond, pulling and guiding him through the dark town.

Breathing in the cool night air, Mysterion stops at the pond’s edge. The unfathomable dark powers of the Netherworld had made Stark’s Pond deeper than the deepest pits of Hell. The water is black. Why no one else in South Park had noticed, he couldn’t say, only that they never seem to.

Peering at the dark water, he feels it again. A monster’s going to come through to Earth. Ripples start forming, bending the stars reflected on the clear surface, and the ground begins to shake.

At least he’s alone, this time.

Mysterion stands and takes a few steps back. Waiting.

Something white breaks the surface. It’s bulbous, as large as a gas station, and it's floating. Tiny tendrils as thin as thread sling down from the monster's slug-like circular body. It's a giant jellyfish, all unearthly white and translucent, rising from the depths of the pond like a ghost.

Mysterion has seen some things in his life, trying to figure out the curse he’d been born with and his connection to R’lyeh; he’d been there, once, when he was a kid.

But he's never seen a demon like this one. 

Thin tendrils snap out towards him like spider webs glowing in blue moonlight. Mysterion ducks and dodges, looking for an opening. The giant bulbous monster stays suspended over the pond, the water eerily still, and its more docile tendrils float listlessly behind it. There’s something sleepy about the slow way the demon moves. 

Staring at it, Mysterion feels his eyes grow heavy.

There’s something flowing out of it and into the air, something that makes him dizzy.

It’s toxic, he realizes too late. 

It’s not like it’ll matter. It’ll eat him alive or whatever it does, and he’ll wake up at home in his bed. But it might go on a rampage in the meantime. So he shouldn’t stop, should pull himself up off the cold ground, should…

His eyes are too heavy. Something sharp and cold twines around his neck, dangling him up in the air as the world starts to go dark.

A burning flash comes streaming through the night sky, bounding like red lightning out of the dark treeline around the pond. Mysterion barely comprehends it, but in the back of his head he knows it's Kyle, and even though dying doesn't matter, even though he's used to doing this alone and his revolving-door mess of a life doesn't _ matter —_ in his delirium he's happy. 

Someone had come after him.

-

Kyle grabs onto the hero before the giant floating jellyfish can drop him into its waiting maw. He wraps his arms around his waist and pulls him back to shore with everything he’s got. 

There’s not much resistance, but the second he lets up he can feel the monster trying to pull him in again. So Kyle twists one hand through a dark violet cape and holds on tight.

With his free hand, Kyle grabs at the tendril around Mysterion's neck and yanks at it, trying to tear it apart. He can smell the toxin in the air, miasmic and thick in his nostrils. He won't have a lot of time. He wishes he'd brought his knife. He'd brought a metal bat - thought that would be more useful - but he'd dropped it on the shoreline.

"Fuck," he says, tugging and tugging at the tendril. "Fuck fuck, come on-" he can feel the tendons or whatever keeps this netherbeast together starting to pull apart. Kyle grits his teeth, Mysterion pressed into his chest, and gives one final yank, the muscles in his arms aching.

The tendril snaps apart.

"God-" 

He curls both hands around Mysterion's cape, near the hood, and drags the hero into the woods as fast as he can, eyes up and watching the ghostly wisps of jellyfish tendrils reaching out towards them. His sneakers slip on the muddy ground, and his back-peddling footsteps are frantic.

As soon as they're hidden in the trees, Kyle sets him up against a large one. "Mysterion," he says, sitting on his knees and shaking the hero gently. "Hey, wake up." Nothing. Kyle grips his shoulders tighter, shaking him a bit harder. "This isn't a good time for you to quit on me," he says, trying to keep his tone light. Through the treeline he can hear a few of those whip-like tendrils snap through crisp night air. Kyle looks back down at the hero and sets a hand on his jaw, taping his face lightly with the palm of his hand. He can just see blond tufts of hair, golden like an autumn sunset. "Come on, man."

Finally violet eyes start fluttering open, the sight so incongruous to the hero's dark demeanour it has Kyle smiling; mostly from relief but little out fondness, too.

"Oh thank fuck," he says, sitting back on his knees. "Are you alright?"

Mysterion blinks himself out of oblivion, waking up slowly. Once his eyes focus, he looks at Kyle like he's sprouting a second head. 

“How the _ hell _ are you here?” Mysterion snaps, glaring.

“What,” he pretends to be offended, grinning, “No 'thank you for saving my life, Kyle'?”

“Did you microchip me or something?” 

Kyle laughs. “I wish. Would you let me do that?”

Mysterion's only answer is a flat stare. “Seriously. How are you here the _ exact same night _ I decide to come? Did you follow me?”

Shaking his head, Kyle looks through the trees again at the giant jellyfish levitating over the pond. It's ethereal in the most literal sense of the word. “I was doing some late-night research,” he starts with a mild shrug, looking back at hero, “The portal has to be under water, and this is the only pond around. I just figured I might find something here.” 

“You came _ alone _ to find a portal to the Netherworld?”

“It's a good thing I came at all.”

“You're going to get killed.”

“I saved your life. Why can't you-”

Mysterion's body lurches forwards, his face suddenly close, “I told you _ I don't need you to!_”

“And I told YOU I'm doing it anyway!” Kyle snaps back, holding his ground.

They stare at each other, absolutely quiet. The silence echoes in the wake of their loud words.

After a few weighted moments, Kyle stands up, all red faced and riled. “_You _ don't get to choose for me,” he says. Glaring, he holds a hand down to the hero. “If I die,” he starts in a softer tone, breathing evenly through his nose a few times to calm down, “it'll be my own fault, not yours. Okay?” Kyle shifts his sneakers into the cold dirt under his feet, waiting for a gloved hand to latch onto his. Hoping it will. “So let's go.” His voice, by now, feels weak in his mouth.

Mysterion looks warily at the offered hand. “You're never going to stop,” he says.

“I am never going to stop,” Kyle confirms with a nod. 

Mysterion closes his eyes in frustrated reluctance. Slowly, he reaches up and takes Kyle’s hand.

Kyle's grin is as big as the low-hanging moon above his head. He pulls the hero to his feet, keeping their hands held tight for a few seconds longer than strictly necessary. “If you weren't around, I'd be doing this on my own,” he says, only a few inches from Mysterion, head tilted to look up at him. The high cry of the jellyfish demon calls out a few yards behind them. Mysterion's eyes are locked onto him, and he doesn't look as composed as he normally does; looks afraid, though Kyle would never tell him so. “So let's work together.”

The hero's hand tightens around his, the only response he gives before he lets go. 

“So what's the plan?” Kyle asks, turning around to face the monster, peering through the treeline. “I don't know what that thing is.”

“Me neither,” Mysterion says. “I've never seen anything like it.”

Kyle has a lot of questions about R'lyeh and the demons and the whole Netherworld Mysterion's powers come from, but he'll save them for later. “I think the trick is speed. We have to do this fast, because of the poison or whatever it has.” 

“If you distract it I can kill it,” Mysterion says. He turns and faces the redhead, stopping them both just before the treeline breaks open to the pond’s shore. “Kyle.” He waits until their eyes meet. “If I die, you run away.”

“Not happening.”

“I'll come back in a few days and we can try again. Together.”

“Nope.”

Mysterion glares at him. “You're impossible.”

“Yes.” He looks at Mysterion’s frown; meets it easily with a smile. “It's okay, I won't let you die, dude. C'mon.”

It doesn't take them long to kill the jellyfish. Kyle darts around the shore, dodging wire-thin tentacles and trying not to breathe too deeply, and Mysterion tears into the beast with an explosion of mist that's more like a bomb than anything. He wants to ask about his powers later, too, because they seem to have so many different applications; seem like an extension of himself when he’s fighting and when he’s not.

Both out of breath from the fight, they look at each other from opposite ends of the pond. Kyle grins, and when Mysterion smiles back, a small but highly infectious smirk, his own grows even wider.

“Done,” Kyle says, still looking across the water at the hero.

The dead corpse of the demon sinks down to the bottom of the pond. Kyle watches its white body disappear into unfathomable blackness.

-

Mysterion makes his way around the pond, his head still a little foggy from the toxins that demon had spread through the air.

Kyle is crouched down by the water, leaned over haphazardly and peering into it. The stars overhead are reflected in the glassy surface. There’s no wind, no sound. There’s nothing but starlight refracting through red hair, lighting up every twist and turn of it. Kyle’s presence is loud in the dark woods surrounding him. Kyle’s presence is always the loudest thing when Mysterion sees him, but under the stars and the still forest it’s almost otherworldly.

“Something's happening,” Kyle says, still looking down at the water.

Standing just at his left now, Mysterion looks into the depths. “What?”

There's a mass rising up from the bottom of the cursed pond. 

“Is that…” Kyle whispers.

“Think so.”

The redhead stands, moving to the hero’s side, as the portal to R'lyeh emerges from the pond. It's purple without any uniform geometry, seems to shift in mass and shape and size as they both stare at it, incomprehensible to human eyes.

“Holy fuck,” Kyle says, almost gasping, “The hell am I looking at?”

“Non-euclidean geometry,” Mysterion says. He turns to face the redhead, the gate roaring on over the pond. "Kyle,” he says, “I have to go in there.” He tries to sound serious, to hold his expression stern. “You can't come with me.”

“Like hell I can't.”

“This isn't a game.”

“I know that.”

The hero is silent, just stares at Kyle with an unrelenting hard glare, trying to will him to listen.

But the redhead only glares back up at him. “Mysterion,” he starts, clearly irritated, “you're _ not _ going into the fucking _ Netherworld _ alone.” Kyle shifts and takes a step towards him, invading the hero's space with loud determination flecked all through his expression. Under his cape and hood, Kenny starts to feel hot. “We're a team,” he says, turning his head up as he speaks, standing close enough to need to. “That's what happened back there, right? When you took my hand.”

Mysterion stays silent for a few moments; there’s too much at risk. He sets one gloved hand on Kyle’s elbow, holding it gently and looks at him with weighted worry. “Kyle... This is R’lyeh. It's worse than the demons, it's worse than all of Hell.” He grips at his elbow, looks through all the different colours in his green eyes, specks of yellow and orange, “I can't let you come with me. I don't know if we'll ever come back. I can't ask you to do that.”

Kyle shakes his head, setting his hand over the one on his elbow. “You don't have to ask,” he says, looking back up at the hero.

_ I can't fight him anymore_, Mysterion realizes with vague yet daunting horror. _ I like having a partner. I like having him as a partner. _

“I…” The hero closes his eyes, feeling ashamed, feeling weak. “...Fine,” he says at length, mouth twisted into an embarrassed frown.

Kyle's smile is bright when he opens his eyes again.

“There is one thing,” Kyle starts, taking another step closer. He grabs one end of Mysterion's long cape, pulling at the fabric. The toes of their shoes touch. “One thing I want to do before we go wander through an endless hellscape together, and maybe never come back.” 

Mysterion can’t breathe; Kyle's chest is only an inch away from his own. He can feel every wave of warmth coming off of the redhead, can smell his hair and his body wash and again, like last time, that summer-nostalgic scent that reminds him of every day he'd grown up with Kyle Broflovski.

“Kyle…”

“It's just a kiss,” his voice falls quiet in the small space between them, desperate, wanting. “It doesn't have to be anything more than that.”

Mysterion can't process the tone, can't believe Kyle would ever sound like that for him, about him, any part of him.

After no reply comes, the redhead speaks again, looking worried. “I won't if you don't want to. But I want to.” Kyle sucks back a breath of air, as if he only realized what his mouth had said after it had come out; his cheeks are flushed but he doesn't look away.

Mysterion frowns at him but this one is only sad. “You might not be glad you did it,” he says, his own voice falling even lower, barely heard in his own ears. He knows he sounds afraid. He _ is _ afraid. This is a million times more frightening than fighting monsters from another world. But he’s already moving in closer, unconscious of it, just wants Kyle tucked completely against him again and again.

Kyle’s hand moves from his cape. He grips at Mysterion’s upper arm, gaze unwavering in foggy violet. “I don't need to know who you are under all that to know how I feel.”

The portal over the dark pond drones on, monsters of indescribable horror screeching and keening in the otherworld, all of it lying it wait for them.

Kyle's hand on his arm slides down, and moves to his side under his lofty cape. The pressure of it is steadying and firm. Certain. “Okay?” Kyle asks, the word breaking apart, his whole palm pressing into Mysterion’s side, holding him.

The hero keeps himself still; holds himself back. “You don’t... We barely know each other,” he says, feeling selfish for the question that follows, “What do you even like about me?” But he needs to know, for Kyle’s sake and his own, if this goes farther than just Mysterion, than only that half of himself.

“Um.” The redhead’s cheeks go bright pink, the flush invading his face all the way down his neck. “You’re- you-” The fingers at Mysterion’s side twitch in surprise, but they stay there, holding on. Kyle’s shy expression shifts to sure and he says, “You’re doing something, you’re trying. A lot of people just complain. You act like you don’t care but it’s so obvious that you do.” Here he smiles, and Mysterion’s eyes widen as he speaks, “And you're funny— you’re fun. You're fun to tease. You make me so mad but it’s a good kind of mad, like I'll never get bored, you know? It just, it feels...” He trails off, the confidence he’d started with dwindling, and he drops his eyes to the hero’s chest. His fingers grip tight on his side, nervous, and he doesn’t meet his gaze although Mysterion’s staring avidly down at him. “When I’m with you, it feels good,” Kyle finishes quietly. 

There’s no response for a minute. 

Still not looking at him, Kyle speaks up again. “Fuck I'm embarrassing,” he says, laughing once in an awkward tone. “Sorry.” 

_You’re fun. You’re fun to tease. You make me so mad but it’s the good kind—_

Mysterion’s resolve cracks apart like it's a bone breaking in his body. His own face goes warm and there’s no more left in him, nothing left to keep him held back. 

He reaches out and sets a hand on Kyle’s back, pulling him in the rest of the way until their chests and hips line up. The contact has his head spinning instantly. Mysterion’s gaze falls down to his lips, feels like he’s going to fall apart as they open just slightly; thinks his own face must be red too, now, with how warm he feels.

Kyle’s face is flushed still, his body stiff where they’re pressed together. “Okay?” He asks, his voice a broken breathless mess, looking back and forth between two violet eyes.

Mysterion sets his forehead down against Kyle’s and he nods, only once, slowly. 

Kyle’s face falls into a small smile that breaks apart at its corners. “Alright,” he whispers. A warm hand finds Mysterion’s jaw. It’s trembling, just a bit, so Mysterion sets his own hand over it. Kyle's other hand grips at his side, still under his cape, and he leans up while he pulls the hero down by the side of his face. 

Kyle kisses him gently, firmly, his lips warm in the cool night air.

Mysterion sighs into it, going slack instantly, his nerves turning weak and useless. He can't think, not with Kyle’s mouth against his own and Kyle’s strong chest pressed against his fully and the small noises he makes as they shift and friction follows. Mysterion’s head fogs over while literal fog creeps out from his hands, losing control of the otherworldly magic. 

Kyle pulls back, eyes half-lidded. “Are you okay?” He asks against his mouth.

Violet mist unfurls around them. Mysterion nods. “It’s fine,” he manages through a delirious breath, and with the hand he has on Kyle’s back he pulls the redhead up into him, kissing him again.

Kyle breathes out through his nose, pulling down at Mysterion’s jaw until he gets his head tilted, and presses in firmer. He kisses at Mysterion’s bottom lip, holding it between his own for a moment before gliding up to his top. The friction sends heat down the hero's thighs. Kyle’s fingers slip up along his face. He plays with the ends of his hair, moves his fingers around one of his ears, and Mysterion feels a shiver run down his spine. He makes a low noise, deep inside his throat.

“Oh-” Kyle starts, breathless. He pulls back further this time, but stays pressed against him. Kyle’s lips look thoroughly kissed and his face is flushed fully and his pupils are dilated wide. When he swallows Mysterion almost whines watching the smooth skin of his throat. He wants to kiss him again. Mysterion wants to pull him back in completely and never stop. 

“You…” the redhead trails off. Mysterion shivers when his fingers run around his ear again, Kyle staring up at him. There’s a short silence before he continues. “We gotta stop,” Kyle says, looking at his mouth.

Mysterion only grunts in response. He’s functioning on one single brain cell, he’s pretty sure, with Kyle wrapped in his arms and his mist. He can still feel his lips against his mouth.

Slowly, Kyle untangles himself. Mysterion lets him go and the mist dissipates, disappearing into the night air. The redhead looks away, his face still hot, and takes a few slow breaths.

Mysterion watches the back of his head and his chest feels as heavy as his arms feel empty.

In front of them, suspended just on top of the pond’s surface, the unknowable mass of the portal curls from one dimensional shape to another. 

“Ready?” Kyle asks him, turning back around to look at him again. His red hair glows in the alien light of the portal.

Mysterion takes a few breaths of his own. It was just a kiss. That’s all it was supposed to be. “I could knock you out and leave you here,” he says with no real bite.

Kyle snorts out a laugh. “You can try.”

After a long moment, Mysterion takes his hand. He squeezes it once. His head still isn’t clear from the kiss and his lips tug up into a dazed smile while the redhead’s fingers curl in around his own.

“Let’s go,” Kyle says. 

They step into the portal side by side, vanishing into the Netherworld together, leaving nothing but darkness and silence and stars behind. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are appreciated :)


End file.
